


Something

by thingcalledlove



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Annie-Centric, Brio - Freeform, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Observer Annie Marks, Organized Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 15:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14139036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingcalledlove/pseuds/thingcalledlove
Summary: No one had ever really put the words 'Annie' and 'perceptive' in the same sentence before, but even she would have had to have been blind to not see that there was something going on between her big sis and their new gang friend.





	Something

No one had ever really put the words _Annie_ and _perceptive_ in the same sentence before, but even she would have had to have been blind to not see that there was _something_ going on between her big sis and their new gang friend.

In fact, she was sure that that _something_ was unfolding in front of her right now. She lounged back in her chair, watching their new gang friend count the cash they had just cleaned. It was all there. Beth had counted it three times. She was a bit anal retentive like that. But anal retentive seemed like a great trait to have in this line of work. 

Gang friend, or Rio as Beth like to remind her, separated the money until there was one very large pile, and three much smaller ones. He nodded towards the smaller ones, "Your cut." 

"We really need to negotiate a new deal," Annie stated as she pocketed her stack. 

"I’m pretty happy with the current deal," Rio replied as he handed Ruby her stack. 

Annie huffed and sat back in her chair. She might be reckless, but she wasn't reckless enough to argue with a man that had already tried to kill her once. She watched as Beth moved to take her cash from Rio. Her hand brushed against his for a moment.  

That brief exchange had Annie perking up a bit in her seat as she tried to covertly glance between the two, but neither of them gave anything away.

"Annie is right," Beth announced, "We've done good work for you. A lot of it."

It wasn't like Beth to stand up to someone, Annie was noticing more and more that Beth always stood up to Rio. Her sister, she decided, was a lunatic. Really sucked at picking her battles, that one.

"Alright, alright," Rio drawled after a moment with a slight grin, "15%. Take it or leave it."

"30," Beth countered.

"15," Rio replied lazily.

"25."

"15."

"20?"

"10." 

"15 is good!" Annie exclaimed, jumping into the conversation before Beth had them working for free. 

Neither of them looked at her. Annie exchanged a glance with Ruby.

After a moment of silence, Beth conceded, looking away from him, "15 will work." A silent _for now_ hung in the air. 

Rio left not long after that.

Annie could not help but notice how utterly flushed her sister looked. 

\- - - - 

“I can do it,” Annie offered as she munched on an apple in Beth’s kitchen.

“Oh, no, it’s fine, I got it,” Beth said with a shrug as she cleared the breakfast dishes off the table. Annie observed how much more chaotic her sister’s life was than her. She loved her nieces and nephews more than most things in the world, but she was glad to only have one kid of her own. How Beth managed four of them at once? It blew her mind.

“You still have to gather up the horde and deliver them all to their various practices and activities,” Annie pointed out as she watched Emma looking around for her missing ballet slipper, Kenny playing keep up with his soccer ball, Jane trying to tie her karate belt and Danny gathering up all his art supplies. “Besides, Sadie is with her Dad for the weekend, so I’m beyond bored.”

“You could drive the kids,” Beth offered with a smile.

“Uh…not that bored,” Annie replied, throwing the apple core towards the garbage bin.

“I got it,” Beth laughed, “Seriously. Besides, I prefer to make sure it all goes…smoothly.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” Annie scoffed, offended.

“Not in those words,” Beth tossed back, “But yes. Exactly.”

Annie should have left it very well alone, but she was just not that kind of person. So, she did the Annie thing, which basically meant she stalked her own sister from a distance. She was curious as to why Beth was so adamant to be the one to do the drop off.

After driving around town, watching her sister be the _Mom of the Year,_ things started to get interesting. Annie pulled into an empty parking space a few down from where Beth parked, trying to be stealthy as possible. She watched as someone got out of a black Cadillac. Button up shirt and dark pants. Definitely Rio. Someone needed to take that man shopping. He literally seemed to have one style of shirt in multiple colours. That and a single hoodie.

Annie leaned forward to watch him get into the car. She couldn’t make out much since Beth’s back windows were tinted and her mini van was much higher off the ground than Annie’s car. 

Annie was starting to get bored of looking at her sister’s back bumper when the break lights turned on. She sat up straighter. Beth was leaving…but she had not seen Rio get out. Which meant he was still in the car with her.

It was her duty as a good sister to follow, wasn’t it? Rio might be their new gang friend, but the gang was the operative word in that moniker. He could be kidnapping her.

Beth drove right past her, and from the minuscule glance that Annie got, Beth seemed to be perfectly fine, smiling even. 

“Uhh,” groaned Annie to the empty car with a not so subtle roll of her eyes, “She would be the type to get Stockholm syndrome.”

Clearly, it was Annie’s job to save Beth from, well, herself mostly, it appeared.

Peeling out of her parking space, Annie tried to follow from a distance. She wondered where they were going, another warehouse maybe? A bank to commit a robbery? Were they going to bury a body?

McDonalds.

They pulled into a McDonalds drive-thru.

“Well, that was anti-climatic,” Annie narrated to herself sadly. She had been hoping for something a little bit more exciting, but no.

The drive-thru was empty, so they zipped right through and were on the road again. Once again, Annie tailed them from a distance. This was turning out to be more boring than driving the kids around would have been Annie decided, pulling back into the same exact space she had left just twenty minutes prior.

Her stomach grumbled, and she regretted not getting something from the drive-thru when she had a chance. She would have killed for a cheeseburger.  And a milkshake. A chocolate one.

She’d fallen so far into her food day dreams, that she let out a very undignified shriek when her car door was pulled open.

Beth stared at her with a mixture of anger and alarm.

“Oh, hey Beth,” Annie said as casually as she could manage (which was not at all), “What are you doing here?”

“I came to ask you the same thing,” Beth answered pointedly.

“I was just…in the neighbourhood. Thought I’d take a drive and just enjoy the…weather.”

Beth raised an eyebrow, folding her arms across her chest. “You were following me. Us,” Beth said tilting her head to the left. Annie looked over to see Rio leaning up against the back of his Cadillac, watching them converse as he drank out of his McDonalds cup. It was probably a milkshake Annie thought bitterly. Lucky bastard.

“No, I wasn’t” Annie denied, trying to look outraged at the accusations.

“Rio,” Beth whisper-yelled, “Is wanted by the FBI. Do you know why he has not been caught by said FBI? Because he knows when he is being followed!”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Annie relented.

Beth seemed to soften at that. “I can handle myself.”

“Yourself, yeah,” Annie agreed, “But him? He’s way out of your comfort zone.”

“I’m fine,” Beth promised sincerely. “Now, go away.”

Annie knew when she was no longer needed nor wanted, so she took Beth’s words to heart and did what she asked. It had absolutely nothing to do with leaving her sister in the hands of a gangbanger just so she could go get that milkshake she was craving. Nope, not at all.

\- - -

“Can you believe that Melissa told Sadie that I wa—"

Annie gasped. Frozen mid-step and unable to look away.

“An-nie!” Beth shouted, elongating her name as she scrambled to pick up the first thing she could get her hands on.

Annie quickly spun around so that she was facing the entry way, instead of the living room, where she had just walked in on her sister and gang friend getting all hot and bothered.

“What the hell?” Beth asked, sounding beyond annoyed. Annie hoped it was okay to turn around again, because she was not about to have this conversation with a wall. She had too many questions and her brain was struggling to comprehend what she had just seen. Maybe she imagined it?

Annie slowly turned around again, and it was apparent that she had not imagined it.

Beth had her arms crossed over her chest and she was wearing what was probably identical shirt number forty-five from the Rio collection, _and nothing else._

Rio for his part, look utterly unbothered with his current state of undress as he leaned against the wall in a pair of boxer briefs that did nothing to hide his sizable—

Annie looked away. Meeting Beth’s eyes instead.

“You can’t just waltz in here unannounced,” Beth snapped. “You could have at least knocked.”

“I never knock!”

“Well, you should probably start!”

"Or you could do the normal person thing and LOCK THE DOOR!"

“I don’t normally mind an audience,” Rio interjected, “But this is a little too sister wives for me.”

“That isn’t even how that show works!” Annie huffed, looking between the two. How in the hell did this happen?

She must have said that part out loud, because Beth glared at her, “You’re the one who told me that it was ‘dried up old twigs’ in there.”

“That’s cold,” Rio teased looking amused.

“Shut up,” Annie retorted with a glare before turning her attention back on her sister. “Besides, I meant hooking up with someone boring, like the middle school principal, not a fucking gang banger…no offence,” directing the last part to Rio. He just shrugged, unfazed.

“Annie,” Beth said gently, “I love you. You are my sister and you mean the world to me, but what I choose to do, is just that. My choice.”

“But—”

“We are two consenting adults,” Beth interrupted, “Just letting off some steam. Let me have this. Please.”

With a sigh, Annie nodded, just a slight tilt of her head. “If you hurt her, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Rio asked, pushing himself off the wall, the full force of his weighted gaze on her.

Beth rolled her eyes and lightly punched his arm. His lips quirked up as he looked away from Annie, his face melting into a dazzling smile when he turned to Beth.

Annie took that moment to make a quick escape before she pissed off the gang banger further. Her sister too for that matter. 

It wasn’t until she was safe in her car that she really thought about it. She had seen _something_ there. In that look they had shared. In the casual manner that Beth had punched him, not a fear in the world at his reaction. In the way that Rio’s façade had melted away, becoming a little softer in her presence. They made a pair that most people wouldn’t understand, but that did nothing to negate the underlining sentiment of what they shared. _Something. Their thing._

With a little smile to herself, Annie started her car, pulling away from the house. Rio would not intentionally harm Beth, that much was obvious now. Maybe it had been all along.


End file.
